


Who is the Benefactor?

by greygerbil



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-12 20:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2124213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This fanfiction is a series of one chapter What If-AUs. It’s a look at all the Benefactors I’ve seen suggested and theorised about by fans. I wrote out the confrontation scenes between each of them and the heroes and tried to guess at every potential Benefactor's reasons. </p><p>The Benefactors are: Chris Argent, Peter Hale, Marin Morrell, Braeden, Kate Argent, Deucalion, Adrian Harris, Rafael McCall, Victoria Argent, Araya Calavera, Alan Deaton and Gerard Argent</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chris Argent is the Benefactor

“You helped me,” Scott said. He felt like the ground had disappeared under his feet. His vision blurred briefly and then became highly focused, zeroing in on the barrel of Chris Argent’s gun right in front of his face.

Somewhere behind him, Malia growled and Stiles hissed at her to stay put so Chris wouldn’t shoot.

“I needed time and information to plan,” Chris said. His voice was as carefully level and cold as it had been when he hammered the cover story for Allison’s death into Scott’s head. “It was clear your pack would not go down without a struggle. When I saw you with Liam, though, the child you had bitten, I knew I had made the right decision. There is no such thing as a good werewolf – not even a ‘true alpha’.”

“I’ve met your daughter. You’re not honouring the memory of that brave woman with a slaughter,” Sheriff Stilinski growled. Chris had tied the Sheriff and Melissa expertly to one of the warehouse’s pillars. It was like a reminder of their first real meeting under the Nemeton; just as then, struggling against the ropes was useless.

“My daughter was a child who hadn’t seen a fraction of what I had at her age. That’s my fault. I should have taught her better.” His voice almost died away; a shadow of haunting grief flickered over his face and made him look old and worn. “It’s my fault she died for people who will only bring suffering. Now all I can do is spare others her fate. I don’t like assassins, but they do their job. Peter I’ll have to remove by myself or he’ll just find a way to come back again, but I would have killed all my targets alone if I could have done it without being taken out.” He glanced at Noshiko Yukimura, who was kneeling over her unconscious daughter’s body. “The Nogitsune is not different from all of you. It was a Kitsune who gave it life. It’s a product of one of you, monsters who try to live like the normal people you’ll never be.”

“The Nogitsune was a reaction to _human_ cruelty,” Mrs Yukimura said, hate burning bright with hate.

“I know that,” Chris said. “So do you think human cruelty will stop? No, it will happen again and creatures like you will react the same way, pulling hundreds of innocents into their misery. It’s like allowing random people access to bombs. Eventually, each and every single one of your will abuse the power in a moment of weakness or anger.”

“What about Isaac?” Derek called, struggling and failing to free himself from the chains that held his weakened body, more human than wolf now. “You took him in and he’s a werewolf!”

“He _was_ a werewolf,” Chris said and Scott’s heart froze. “You think Isaac would stay in France while his friends in Beacon Hills are picked off one by one?” Chris shook his head. “I suppose none of you ever cared enough about Isaac to learn even the slightest bit about his personality. After all, you never asked me what became of him, either.”

“You agreed to Allison’s code,” Lydia said, pressed against the concrete warehouse wall, her eyes wide. She looked dazed with horror. “She told me: We protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

“I am following my daughter’s code,” Chris said, moving his finger on the trigger, a slight scratching noise of skin against plastic in Scott's ear. “I’m protecting the innocent people of Beacon Hills from all of you.”


	2. Peter Hale is the Benefactor

“It took you this long? How many of you are supposed to be megaminds again?”

Peter shook his head, a small smile playing around his lips as he glanced at Lydia and Stiles.

“I mean, my name’s missing on the list and I’m gaining all these wonderful new powers.” Almost casually, he punched the wall with his elbow, taking a chunk of stone out of it. “On the other hand, poor Derek,” a brief, bemused look at his nephew, who sat against the door where Peter had thrown him, as carelessly as if he was a pillow, “is losing it in spades... you guys are making this too easy.”

“But why?! We could have gone after you, we could have sicked Argent on you, but we never did! Why are you turning on us?!” Scott shouted, hands clenched into fists.

“Well, do you want me to thank you all for being idiots? I can if it’ll make you feel better.” The werewolf heaved a sigh. “And again, I’m not that difficult.” Grinning, he glanced at Kate Argent’s lifeless body which was a little more blue than the first time he’d killed her. “With all of them gone and the skills and might of a few choice creatures transferred to me, I will finally have the power I need. Then no one can ever try and take my daughter away from me again.”

Malia smiled at her father as he briefly put his arm around her shoulders.

“Seriously, Malia, what are you doing? We told you Peter lies all the time! You wanna talk about ‘not difficult’, he’s consistently been a traitor!” Stiles found it impossible to keep the hurt and fear out of his tone.

“Peter never pretended to be a good guy,” Malia said. “He’s been honest with me and besides, he’s a survivor. I like to survive, too. I wish you’d see that, Stiles,” she said, callous nature tempered for just a moment. “You’d be better protected in his pack.”

“Stilinski is right. Spare us all the show and stop pretending you care about that girl,” Satomi spat. “You were always untrustworthy. Talia had the right of it to try and keep your daughter away from you.”

“Oh, Satomi, you never liked me and I never liked you or your weird tea. However, I respect you, I really do. I knew you’d not fall to any of these amateur killers.” Peter gave a saccharine smile, fangs showing, claws extended. “Really, all I wanted was your attention. See, Scott here is easy prey for someone as strong as me now, but I'm not sure how his Alpha of Hearts powers transfer. You, however...” He looked into her alpha red eyes. “You have something I want.”


	3. Marin Morrell is the Benefactor

“This is insane,” Alan said.

Marin’s smile held no humour. The wall she had constructed around herself was invisible but powerful, near unbreakable. A circle of mountain ash held back the werewolves, but Alan Deaton knew it was the blood of innocent creatures running in the streets of Beacon Hills, the essence of their souls twisted into a spell, that kept the humans out.

“Who of your little cronies is going to finish me?”

She looked between Chris Argent and Sheriff Stilinski, both with guns pointed, and Scott, standing at the head of his pack, fangs bared.

“Scott is never going to have the guts to kill, even to protect his pack. The Sheriff can’t link me to any of the murders and even if he could, I would be out of jail before he has finished typing his report. Hunters, well, they don’t kill humans.”

“Pretty sure you crossed the line to Darach around four murders ago,” Stiles piped up.

“No, I am simply doing what I have always done. I restore balance.”

“How can you call a hunt on us ‘balance’?” Lydia asked, perplexed.

“The nemeton has oversaturated this town with all sorts of creatures. However, I also always knew some of these assassins were not going to survive,” Marin said calmly. “My involvement just accelerated the process of you and them meeting before too many innocents could get hurt in the crossfire. The supernaturals and the assassins will thin each other out, Peter Hale will remain as a strong pack leader with enough viciousness in him to prevent another supernatural accumulation and things will go back to an equilibrium.”

“Are you absolutely sure you can’t shoot her through the barrier?” Stiles asked Chris and the Sheriff with one eyebrow raised.

“Who gives you the right to decide what balance is?”

Scott cocked his head. His expression spoke of honest confusion and Stiles congratulated him for being a good enough person to still care about her reasons – he certainly didn’t.

“I am a druid. It is my duty.”

Alan was running through the different possibilities in his head, all he could do to stop her, but Marin’s words were slowly withering down his options to only one. He felt the weight of the world sink on his shoulders. Despite all, she was still his sister.

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” He asked quietly.

The beautiful young woman turned her hard gaze on Deaton again.

“Don’t take that tone with me. You were never convincing when you played the big brother.”

“I’m not speaking to you as a brother. I’m speaking to you as a fellow druid.”

Alan pulled the short inscribed wooden oak dagger out of the inner pocket of his jacket, holding it forward. The invisible force around him shivered and bent. 

“I am sorry, but I think it’s my time to restore balance.”

Marin straightened up, pulling the power together around her. For a moment, Alan thought he saw sadness in her face, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared.

“I didn’t want to do this, either. You should have stayed in your clinic with your tail between your legs, like you have for so many years – it was safer. But if I have to go through you, _brother_ , I will.”


	4. Braeden is the Benefactor

“Really? We’re doing this again?”

“Stiles...”

Scott shot him a warning glance. He was chained up against the fence. Stiles and Lydia sat back to back on the floor, hands and feet tied with zip tie cuffs.

“No. No, I want us to dwell on this,” Stiles said, glaring at the werewolf tied up next to Scott. “This is the third mass murderer you’ve dated. Is that just your type?”

Derek’s growl might have sounded a little more convincing if he wasn’t almost human by this point. The dried blood on his bruised face did nothing to underline his authority, either.

“To be fair, any man who sleeps with a woman who tells him point blank she’d kill anyone for money has no reason to be surprised when he ends up in trouble,” Braeden said. She was leaning against the wall next to the machine that administered the electric shocks to the werewolves like she was just a casual observer of the situation.

“What’s your problem with us?”

Lydia had finished crying half an hour ago and now that the water was dried up, all that seemed to have been left behind was hot, burning anger.

“I don’t have a personal problem with any of you. I think most of you are accidentally dangerous at best and monsters at worst, but there’s humans who are just as bad.” Braeden shrugged. “This is my way out.”

“Out of where?” Stiles asked.

Braeden gestured to the marks on her neck. “You think people are in this line of work ‘til retirement?”

“Then why not just steal the money in our vault and leave?”

Derek fixed her with his eyes, but she refused to be cowed by his murderous glance.

“You’d have never let me get away with it if there wasn’t something happening to distract you – and, hopefully, take you out.” She put her hand on the machine, but did not adjust the dial. Her words were doing enough to hurt Derek. “Besides, some of you and the rest of the freak show in this town are worth a lot more as dead bodies than their prices on my list would lead you to believe. I’ve been in this business long enough. I’ve made deals and arrangements before I came here. The return I’m going to make on showing these corpses to the right people will double my investment. Not to mention what I’ll get for bringing Peter in alive, he managed to piss off some pretty scary people. When I’m through with this town, I’ll never have to get sliced up again just to pay for whatever rathole hotel I’m staying in that evening.” She chuckled. “As a bonus, I won’t have any annoying werewolves, banshees and whatever else you picked up off the streets and put in your pack sniffing around for me. It’s win-win.”

“So that’s all it is?” Derek asked. “Just... money?”

Braeden smiled.

“A girl’s gotta eat.”


	5. Kate Argent is the Benefactor

“Okay, I’ll admit it – I didn’t think you were witty enough to pull this off.”

Peter’s self-depreciating smirk was replaced by a grimace of pain as Kate pressed the electric shock baton again his side and grinned.

“I tricked you Hales once, what made you think I couldn’t do it again?”

“To be fair, that was Derek,” Peter gasped. “The kid’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

If Derek heard or cared about Peter’s insult, he didn’t show it. The serrated iron trap clamped around his ankle was probably distracting.

“You were on the list,” Scott managed to get out. His eyes were watering as he tried to pull out the stake that Kate had pushed through his thigh into the ground to pin him like a butterfly. “You were on it!”

Kate waved her hand. “The people who really had a shot at killing me knew I wasn’t actually to be taken down. I sampled the low-level idiots, they had no idea that I was at the top of the pile – will you stop that?”

She stepped on Chris’ hand. The hunter struggled and coughed, a mix of blood and saliva dripping onto the muddy forest floor.

“I am doing this for our family, Chris,” she said. “We can be real hunters again. We don’t have to let them hurt us.”

“You were the one who started all the trouble in Beacon Hills,” he rasped, staring up at her. “I don’t want an execution of every innocent creature in this town. Victoria and Allison would never have approved of this. But you... under either code I’ve followed, I’d have every excuse to shoot you.”

For a moment Kate looked honestly angry – frustrated, even. However, she forced a brief smile and kicked the pistol Chris had been reaching for into the bushes.

“Well, good thing that with all of them gone, I’m in charge. I don’t need excuses. I won’t let the Argents get picked off one by one anymore.” She stepped over Chris’ body towards Scott and Derek. “It’s time to turn the tables again.”


	6. Deucalion is the Benefactor

“Why did you let him go?” Peter hissed at Scott and Derek. “What were you _thinking_?”

“I – I thought everyone deserves a second chance. He didn’t choose to be this way,” Scott said. His voice was wavering, but anger was already mingling with shock. Although he was bruised and beaten, he was inching closer towards Deucalion again. “We thought you could do better!”

“He’s spent 10 years killing. People like that don’t stop,” Chris said through gritted teeth. Though bleeding from a laceration on his forehead, he was standing over the Sheriff’s unconscious body, trying to somehow shield both him and Stiles kneeling next to him; Malia was by his side, almost shuddering with held-back aggression.

“It was your father who made me what I am, Christopher,” Deucalion said. “Your father who showed me that peace is no solution.”

“What he did was wrong, but you decided how to react to it,” Chris shot back.

“I don’t get it.” Braeden and Derek both stood pointing guns at Deucalion, but her stance was more secure, never letting her aim waver as she talked, whereas Derek was still attempting to force the claws out of his hands. “You hired me to save Peter and Derek. Why not just let them be killed?”

“A personal quirk,” Deucalion said with a slight smile that made him look much too harmless. “An indulgence. I’ve had run-ins with the Calaveras and I do not like them much. They are murderers and you can rest assured that they will pay, too. Besides, I didn’t want them to have any information these two could give.”

“You said you had a vision,” Scott said, stubbornly appealing to some modicum of decency that he still believed had to exist.

“Just because ‘vision’ has two meanings in the dictionary doesn’t mean one is magically restored with the other,” Peter snapped.

“Ah, but that is where you’re wrong, Peter. It’s just that my vision has changed.” Deucalion spread his arms. “I have known power beyond compare. Far beyond a ‘true alpha’. This town is special and I will harness its might and make it the centre of my territory.” Deucalion glanced at Peter. “I’d hoped you had little morals enough so that I could use you for a while, but you’ve switched to the wrong side this time.”

“You realise we’ll kill you, right?” The coyote said.

Deucalion just chuckled and that was enough for Malia to throw herself forward. However, he easily dispatched her with one precise strike, flinging her against a tree trunk. Stiles winced as if he was the one who’d received the blow.

“I will die at some point, without a doubt. No king’s reign lasts forever,” Deucalion said, almost gently, as his eyes glowed red and his face began shifting. “But it will not be tonight.”


	7. Adrian Harris is the Benefactor

“I’m enjoying this,” Harris said and gave the acidic little smile that he usually reserved for handing out detention that spanned at least a fortnight. “You’re all listening to me now. That might actually be a first.”

Of course they’d end up in the school again – everything seemed to come down to this building. Stiles made the mental note to ask Argent to check whether it was cursed.

“Are all your teachers crazy killers?” Malia asked Stiles. “That would make school a little more interesting.”

“Pay attention, class.”

A bullet zipped past Malia’s head, only an inch away from her ear. A ripple of panicked movement, straining against chains and wolvesbane-laced ropes, went through the row of students tied to their chairs. Scott, Stiles, Lydia, Kira and Malia struggled to no avail. 

“Didn’t the darach kill you?” Lydia asked.

“Dear Jennifer didn’t know of the failsafes I put in against my death. You really think I would rely on my frail little human life in Beacon Hills?” He shook his head. “No. After the incident with Kate, I started gathering information. The Hales did make it a little too easy for me to find things out. Who builds an entrance to a vault in a school? But Peter helped, too. He has some very specific knowledge about revival. Not that I will actually spare his life for it, but he can keep thinking that for a little while longer.”

“So are you just bored with your job? You hate your pupils, so you send assassins after them?” Kira asked, between fear and puzzlement.

“Yes, I am bored, and yes, I do hate just about every student I’ve ever had,” Harris said. “I don’t know you personally,” he gestured at Kira and Malia with a wave of his hand like he wanted to chase a fly away, “but since you hang out with this group, I can imagine. Still, every teenager is annoying. However, Jennifer opened my eyes to how your world treats ours.” He sat down at the teacher’s desk. “We’re expendable. Sacrifices waiting to happen. Collateral damage in some cockfight between packs. Even you supposed goodie-two-paws only care about your friends. You don’t make any attempt to inform the humans of this town that they live next to an open door to hell. How often has the police station been ripped apart? How many perfectly healthy people have died in the hospital?”

He folded his hands on the table in front of him.

“You had your chance to show that you are able to keep your kind in check. You can’t. Now it’s my turn.”


	8. Rafael McCall is the Benefactor

“That’s your own child on that goddamn list!”

Rafael McCall checked the lock again. Melissa and the Sheriff where each captured in a cell, but Chris Argent could be more trouble. He’d cuffed him and bound his arms before throwing him in jail.

“Yes, that’s my child,” he told the Sheriff, anger swaying in his voice. “And if you had done your jobs – you as Sheriff and all of you as parents – then I wouldn’t have to put him down now. So don’t go around telling me that I’m a bad father. I’ve had it with you all complaining to me. You two took half a year to realise what a blind person can see,” he nodded at Melissa and the Sheriff, “and as for you, Argent, you couldn’t even keep your own daughter alive, so forgive me if your parenting tips aren’t exactly the top of my list.”

“You’re about to get your own son killed! My son!” Melissa exploded. “He’s done nothing wrong!”

“He let a witch who has killed fifteen people escape and willingly aided the flight of a werewolf who’s killed hundreds, which he knew,” the agent said. “I’m not enjoying this, Melissa.” The noise Melissa made, anger beyond words, showed she was not susceptible to his soothing stern voice. “It’s my job. I’m a hunter, like Argent.”

“You are nothing like me,” Chris Argent growled.

“No, I know how to get things done.”

“When did you even find out?” The Sheriff asked, not trying anymore not to shout.

“That werewolves exist? About a week or two after I came back. We aren’t all terrible detectives, Stilinski. Why do you think I work for the FBI whereas you’re a small-time Sheriff in a state where they don’t even change command when half the police station gets killed?”

Chris Argent was flexing his arms trying to break out of the cuffs. As the Sheriff quieted down with white hot rage, Chris spoke up: “Peter Hale – why is he not on the list?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s the one that bit my son. Peter Hale made him this creature.” Agent McCall closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself as he spoke the words. “You think I don’t care about Scott because I can’t let him become a monster, but there’s nothing more important in my life than him. I would never give that job to some gun-for-hire. I’m going to deal with Peter Hale myself.”


	9. Victoria Argent is the Benefactor

“If you’d had your son under control, none of this might have happened.”

Melissa struggled against Victoria’s grip, but the nurse was no match for the leader of the Argent clan, especially now that she had the strength of a werewolf. Sheriff Stilinski and Chris Argent might have been able to help, but Victoria had made sure to get them on their own first and leave them tied up and defenceless. The other werewolves, of course, were all writhing on the ground – wolvesbane bullets would do that. Melissa’s gaze was glued to her son’s chest, which was raising and falling like he fought for every breath.

“You are a mother, too,” she pleaded. “They’re just children.”

“No. Thanks to these creatures, I was a mother.”

“We also fought the Nogitsune,” Lydia said in an unsteady voice. “It’s not like we wanted it in this town.”

The werewolf hunter turned on her heel, opening her mouth to say something, but Chris’ rough voice cut in.

“This is not what Allison died for, Victoria. They were her friends. She protected them.”

Victoria paused for a moment, as if she was considering his words. Then, she grabbed Melissa’s hair tighter and rammed her head into the wall, leaving her unconscious body to fall to the floor like a sack of grain. Scott groaned, spitting black bile and failing to fight his way to his feet.

“Yes, my daughter died to protect monsters,” she said, kneeling in front of Chris, her clawed fingertips resting on his biceps and slowly piercing his shirt, his skin. “You let our child die, Chris.”

“I know that!” Chris said, choked. “I miss her more than anything, but she–”

A backhand slap to the face shut Chris up and let his bound body tumble to the floor.

“You took in one of these dogs in her stead!” She hissed. “And I don’t care what part of France you deposited him at, I’ll find him and rip his head off myself.”

Victoria turned away from her husband to Derek Hale.

“I suppose I should thank you, Derek. Without your bite, I wouldn’t have this opportunity.”

He huffed, voice muffled through the clot of bile in his throat. “You’re only showing everyone the truth, Argent. It’s not we that are bad. You were a murderer when you were a human and you’re still one now.”

“I was a hunter then and I am a hunter now,” Victoria countered in her strict voice that carried no warmth, no mercy. “I might have missed one or two on my list, your uncle, for example, since I thought we’d killed that one before. Once the assassins are finished, though, I’ll go through this town with a fine-tooth comb myself and take out every last bit of supernatural vermin that managed to escape.”

“What about you?” Stiles asked sharply. “You’re a werewolf.”

“I’ve killed myself once before. I will do it again – but for now,” she unsheathed a serrated knife, “I have a job to finish.”


	10. Araya Calavera is the Benefactor

“Why all these wide eyes?” Araya Calavera gave a grandmotherly smile as she looked at the ragtag collection of mythical creatures and exhausted human adults that her hunters held at gunpoint. “It is not news to you that I’m a hunter.”

“It’s news to me that you’re a murderer.”

Chris never took his gaze off Severo Calavera; the two had ended up menacing each other with their weapons once again, eyes locked.

“All hunters are murderers, hijo.”

“You said you’d only come for me when I bit my first beta,” Scott argued.

“Which you did,” Araya said.

“The assassins came before that!”

“I didn’t need a banshee to know you would do it and do it soon, too,” Araya said calmly, still smiling, this time at Lydia. “You’re not evil, Scott. You’re just incompetent. Sadly, being a werewolf is not an occupation with much room for error.”

“It was an accident, it was the only way to save him! We were fighting some… thing – it all went so fast.”

“That’s why this town needs to be completely cleansed. There is no peaceful solution in this cluster. We will raze the town and burn the Nemeton.”

“Did you forget about me, Araya?” Peter asked; he seemed apprehensive rather than hopeful. Peter Hale was not that stupid.

“Oh, never.” She gave a slight chuckle. “Severo just demanded to have you for himself.”

“Charmed,” Peter said flatly.

“Araya – right? Araya, you’re not a madwoman, we can…”

The woman brushed away the Sheriff’s words with her hand. “Spare me the law enforcement talk. Christopher, you should have gotten a few of our own into this police station. It’s bothersome to deal with newly initiated still trying to figure out whether Little Red Riding Hood was a biography. There’s a few future officers I’ll place.” She nodded at her hunters. “It’s time someone got this town under control.”


	11. Alan Deaton is the Benefactor

The gate to Deaton’s clinic was hip-high, but if he wanted it to, it could keep every shapeshifter known to man out of the house. Stiles and Lydia were kept at bay with the rather mundane addition of a gun to his magic arsenal.

“I suggest you don’t come closer,” he said.

Scott didn’t listen. His hand pressed against the wolvesbane barrier, but he found himself unable to push through this time, still reeling from the revelation. Deaton had been like a kind uncle to him since he’d started working here, replacing the father who’d run away.

“I had some trust in you, Scott. The only reason I stayed in this town was to prepare for this very moment. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have put things in motion when Derek and Laura returned and their family brought yet more strife to this place.”

“But what did I do since then?! It’s not my fault everything comes to this place!”

“You let Deucalion go,” Deaton said. “That makes you a threat. Now you even have a beta… you must understand I have to stop this. The Nemeton will always draw things here, so before we are overrun, someone has to do something. You, Scott, and all your friends, inadvertently and on purpose, have not helped the safety of this place. I’m going to study Peter’s body after I kill him and make sure that this time, everyone stays in the ground.”

“But what the hunters did to him wasn’t Deucalion’s fault,” Scott shouted, anger flaring more the longer he listened to Deaton’s even voice. 

“His choices are his own. When Deucalion tore his packs and his druid to shreds and led others to do the same, Talia made no move, even though it started on her territory, in my clinic, and I told her of it,” the druid said. “She was afraid. She would rather hole up in her little town and pretend these things would never come back to us than raise a hand to fight. Eventually her neglect drew the hunters to this haunted place.” Deaton shook his head slowly. “I will not wait idle while people die. Beacon Hills needs my help.”


	12. Gerard Argent is the Benefactor

“Come on, Scott, you have shown yourself to be a little clever. You must have known that mountain ash wouldn’t last forever.” Gerard Argent grinned at the young werewolf, who sat on the floor with a blade covered in wolvebane extract stuck deep in his back. The bodies of Scott’s friends littered the floor, each taken out with great finesse and lots of brutality. “You hoped it would, I assume, so that you wouldn’t have to face the fact that sometimes you need to finish a threat off for good. Now you suffer the fate of a coward. Just like my son.”

Chris made an angry noise around the gag in his mouth and Gerard seemed to enjoy this for a moment before he pulled the dirty piece of cloth out of his mouth.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Chris hissed.

“Yes, you should have. But you didn’t because I’m family and you didn’t have too much of that left.” His tone became mockingly soft before he thrust the rag back in his mouth and pressed his head against the wall, almost choking him on the fabric. “You, Christopher, are the reason that men don’t usually lead in this family. You’re weak. That’s why your daughter is dead.”

“You don’t give a damn about Allison!” Scott exploded. “We all cared about her more than you did! You said you’d kill your own family to survive!”

“And not just family. Which is why I’ll be the only one to do just that – survive. I must thank you again, Scott, Derek… you didn’t play your parts all the way like I expected you to, but it worked out in the end. Once I have taken care of the rabble in this town, I will have the power of an Alpha, Peter Hale’s secret of an even longer life extracted from him, the Nemeton and people will know exactly what to expect if they cross me.”

“You are delusional if you think you can hold on to this place,” Deaton rasped, pressing a hand on his bleeding stomach wound. “The power of the Nemeton is for no man to control.”

“I am no mere man anymore,” Gerard said, eyes flashing blue. “And I think I have all the prerequisites. After all, like Tolstoy said: ‘In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love it’.”


End file.
